Promotion and Release
Brian Eno advised Talking Heads that the music on Remain in Light was too dense for a quartet to perform. The band expanded to nine musicians for the tours in support of the album. The augmenting members recruited by Harrison were Belew, Funkadelic keyboardist Bernie Worrell, bassist Busta "Cherry" Jones, Ashford & Simpson percussionist Steven Scales, and backing vocalist Dolette MacDonald. The larger group performed sound checks in Frantz and Weymouth's loft by following the rhythms established by Worrell, who had studied at the New England Conservatory and Juilliard School. Their first appearance was on 23 August 1980 at the Heatwave festival in Canada in front of 70,000 people; Robert Hilburn of the Los Angeles Times called the band's new music a "rock-funk sound with dramatic, near show-stopping force". On August 27, the expanded Talking Heads performed a showcase of tracks to an audience of 125,000 at the Wollman Rink in New York City's Central Park. The Canada and New York gigs were the only ones initially planned, but Sire Records decided to support the nine-member band on an extended tour.
Remain in Light was released worldwide on October 8, 1980. Talking Heads and Eno originally agreed to credit all songs in alphabetical order to "David Byrne, Brian Eno, Chris Frantz, Jerry Harrison and Tina Weymouth" after failing to devise an accurate mathematical formula for the split, but the album was released with the credits "David Byrne, Brian Eno, Talking Heads". Frantz, Harrison, and Weymouth disputed Byrne and Eno's attempt to claim sole credits, especially for a process they had partly funded. According to Weymouth, Byrne told Kalman to doctor the credits on Eno's advice. Later editions rectified the error. Remain in Light received its world premiere airing in its entirety on 10 October 1980 on WDFM. It was certified Gold by the Canadian Recording Industry Association in February 1981 after shipping 50,000 copies, and by Recording Industry Association of America in September 1985 after shipping 500,000 copies. Over one million copies have been sold worldwide.
Read more about this topic: Remain In Light
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